Web Design Elements You Should Avoid Having on Your Site

Web designs should be done to give your visitors the greatest impression, ease of use and most important of all a welcoming experience. It doesn't matter if you had the greatest product in the whole world, a poorly done web site will drive visitors away keeping you from selling a single copy of your product.

When I'm talking about a "good design", is not just about a good graphical design. Professional web designs will be able to point out that there are many components which contribute to a good website, such as accessibility, interface or layout, user experience, and of course the most straightforward, the graphic design.

I have highlighted some features of the worst web designs I've come across. I hope you will be able to compare that against your own site as a checklist. If anything on your site fits the criteria, you should know it's high time to take serious action!

1) Background music

Unless you are running a site that promotes a band, a CD or anything related to music, I highly advise you to stay away from putting looping background music onto your site. You might enjoy the music the first time you bring the site up, but every time a visitor comes to your site and opens the other pages they will get tired of hearing the music start all over again on each page. I would just turn off my speakers or leave your site. This just adds to the visitor's burden when viewing your site. Users on dial up connections will have to wait longer just to view your site the way it is meant to be viewed.

2) Extra large/small text size

As I said, there is more to web design than purely graphics. User accessibility is one big part of it too. Text design on your site should be legible and reasonably sized to enable your visitors to read it without straining their eyes. You won't be selling your product of the visitor cannot read your site.

3) Popup windows

Popup windows are primarily used to display advertisements. I regard, 90% of popup windows as not worthy of my attention. I just close them on instinct every time each one manages to pass through my popup blocker and pops up on my screen. Imagine if you had a very important message to convey and you put it in a popup window that gets killed most of the time it appears on a visitor's screen. Your website loses its function immediately!

In concluding this article, let me remind you that as a web master your job is to make sure your website does what it's meant to do effectively. Don't let some minor mistakes stop your site from functioning optimally!